


The silent time inside the looking-glass

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: Wynne finds herself thinking of Loghain as they face the Archdemon, and again when she senses her time is drawing to an end in Orlais.From a prompt from this list: https://brightoncemore.tumblr.com/post/616578076226322432/poetry-prompts
Relationships: Loghain Mac Tir/Wynne
Kudos: 2





	The silent time inside the looking-glass

She had not much time for introspection. The younger charges often spent long hours wondering what they were meant for, what they would be, why they were afflicted with these powers and what they missed. She remembered hours when she was younger than now, wondering if she was desirable in a mirror she glanced in, wondering how her life might have been had she not been blessed with her gifts.If she would be deemed pretty in her village compared to the other girls, the ones who were still in pig-tails when she was taken away. She wondered which of the local boys she would have married, or if she would have left for other ambitions. Such wonderings were far away now, decades past, and she wondered why it ever mattered to her. She had lived a good life in the circle, a life she was proud of. The past few years, her diligence, her hard work had offered her freedoms she had never expected, including the opportunity to meet a hero of her young years.

She was old enough to have been born into a Ferelden under the yoke of Orlais, something she was sure that the younger members of their party could not have fathomed. It was a privilege that you could not even see until it was taken away from you, that idea of freedom. When you have never known anything but that freedom, how can you know what it would be like to live apart from it?  
Orlais was a tyrannical ruler, at least how she had experienced it. Levies taken from grain, taxes taken that they would never see. The stories around the lost were whispered around the towns; those who had ben conscripted, those who had been vocal critics and had disappeared, those who had decided to join the cause of the lost king. These young people did not know what it was like to be under the joke of another. They would never understand what Maric and Loghain meant to Ferelden.

When you were away from the world, in your own micro community, it was easy to miss the news from outside, but even the circle felt the change of the new king. Even the stories told at night to the children had changed. Maric restored to the throne was more than just a story of a lost prince, it was a promise of power restored. 

She had seen through the stories. That Maric returning to the throne had been a symbol of freedoms to some of the mages. That Loghain, the simple poacher, a man on the wrong side of the law made a hero, a commoner given lands and freedoms he could never have imagined but fought for tooth and nail, the one person the prince could trust being somebody who seemingly came from nothing. That was a story that even she could find hope in - that anybody could be a hero, if they worked hard enough. 

It was what made the betrayal all the more biting.

She had hoped that volunteering to go to Ostagar would make her useful. Here, after so many years being part of the circle’s daily life, she could share her gift with the world for the better of her countrymen. She had finally found the trust of the templars through her years of dedication to the circle, to its ideals and the furthering of its research. She was proud of all she had achieved, but prouder still to be stepping out of it as a venerated mage, of somebody recognised as a leader, as somebody who could stand with the captains of the Ferelden army and the Grey Wardens themselves as a protector of the country they grew up in. She was excited, as silly as it sounded now, at the idea of serving under the great General Mac Tir. She was excited to be under the command of a hero.

And some hero.

She would never understood what drove the young Warden to forgive the tyrant Mac Tir. What made them see so little in the promise of Alistair, to throw it all out for their enemy. It was not her place to question however. There was no point in it. She was here by the grace of the spirit that kept her old body alive, and she needed to keep herself as far from the anger she felt as possible. Alistair was safe at least, betrothed to the traitor’s daughter in a move that must have pleased even the most pernicious of the court-dwellers. Or perhaps it pleased none of them; Wynne was happy enough to admit that the latter pleased her greatly. The pride of these people, holed up in their grand estates with staff to look after ever concievable need, was enough to put her teeth on edge. In that she understood Loghain’s frustrations. How could they know what it was like to have sacrificed more than a tiny portion of their gold? How could they have known what it was like for a taxation to leave a family unable to feed their children, for the banns to take away land that was lived on, for the eating of your own grain to be made illegal. They could never know in the way that she could never know. There was a great privilege to her life in the circle, and one that she was thankful for given the life she could have lead.

It wasn’t comfortable, finding that shred of respect for the man who had so completely betrayed her ideals of him. She should have known better though, than to still hold up heroes at her age. People would always disappoint you, it was in the very nature of what made man to constantly strive for the divine and come up lacking. There was lacking, however, and then there was dooming a whole generation of fighters to die. There was selling the one hope the country had against the blight away. There was being responsible for the death of the king.

She had liked Cailan, from what she had seen of him. He made a point of touring the camp, introducing himself to all of the senior commanders in the field. When he met her, he seemed particularly warm, taking her hand in his gloved embrace and holding it whilst smiling deeply. He listened to all she had to say about how much of an honour it was to fight alongside the Grey Wardens, and they had swapped a story or two about the legends they had heard. The one she had to share, about a fighter riding a Griffon, had pleased him so greatly that she had heard him continuing to tell his man about it as they left. He was a kind leader.

He did not deserve what Loghain had done to him.

Returning to Ostagar was painful. She knew it would be painful. But she owed it to the people she had lost to return again, to find their bodies if she could and return them to the earth. She did not expect to see the mockery of Cailan’s body on show, to see him vulnerable and naked, pinned up like an effegy to those monsters. It was obscene, and Loghain’s lack of compassion made her stomach churn. He had done this. If nothing else, here was a man that his daughter had married, here was a man born of his greatest friend and ally. Here was a man whom Loghain must have cradled as a boy, somebody who must have been playmates with his daughter. An expected child of the queen whom he cherished, the king who was as a brother to him. On that level at least, could he not see the great waste of it? Could he not feel the spike at the heart of any parent - the fear of losing their child?

It had been many months since she had heard any news of Rhys. They were not likely to return to the circle any time soon, and there was no way to have things sent forward to her in any way that wouldn’t create more problems than it would solve. She had never been so grateful that her son was far away from this country, far away from the dangers of the blight. Orlais had fear and fright enough though, and not knowing what he was doing, not having the reports from the templars there through Gregoir, not having that little thread that joined them was tearing away at her. She could not believe that Loghain did not feel the same pang when he saw that body. It filled her with rage that he would not show even the smallest piece of remose, harping on still about the empress coming over the border with some cabal of wardens to take back Ferelden for Orlais. It sounded like madness. Perhaps it was. He would not be the first man to turn worry into a knot in his brain.

The warden insisted on burying Cailan, as was right. She saved the best of his armour to wear herself into the final battle, saying that she would happily fight in his memory. Loghain had no words for that, at least.

There was a somber tone when they returned to Redcliffe, Loghain pouring over some old maps that the Warden had found them, the Warden herself resting her head on the bard as they travelled. She was so young. It hit her sometimes, just how much was sitting on the shoulders of this child, just how much she relied on them for guidance and help, especially as her own parents were gone. Wynne had tried her best to be what the warden had needed; a guardian figure, somebody responsible, somebody who could nurture her and be the family she was missing. The child did not need to know of her own worries, her own pain. Young people had a hard time facing their own mortality, she knew that from her own childhood. It was impossible to think what becoming old would really entail, and she did not need the worries of an old woman on her shoulders on top of the responsibilities she found herself with at such a tender age. At least Leliana had been a comfort, and not a hinderance as Wynne had worried at first. She knew all too well how easy it was to fall in love with an older woman, even if it was not romantic; to fall in love with the words of a more worldly person, to fall in love with the woman you might be in ten year’s time. But no, this was more than that. Leliana was a better, kinder person than she had read her to be. It made her wonder if… well. If there was more kindness to be shown elsewhere as well.

The rooms they had been given in Redcliffe belonged to the late wife of Arl Eamon, the brave young woman who had given her life for their young son. The decor of the main suite was elaborate, with beautiful hand-carved and painted details in pure white and gold, and glasswork that must have come from the furthest reaches where the greatest glass-smiths resided. She had never seen anything quite so opulent. The warden would have this room once they were back from dinner with Leliana, and they would be in the waiting-rooms for the servants, but for now as the festivities continued downstairs she found herself able to sit in these lavish parts of the castle, wondering what it must have been like to be born somebody expectant of a life like this. The warden was one of those people. Born in a castle, waited on hand and food, now pledged to a life of servitude she did not ask for, a life of duty when she could have had anything else. That burden. It sat on all like her, like them, crushing them slowly over a lifetime.

“I always thought of Isolde as a frivolous girl,” she heard a voice say from the doorway. She looked up to see Loghain standing there, dressed in a linen tunic instead of his usual heavy plate armour, an apple in his hand. “She came from Orlais to occupy Redcliffe, you know. Fell in love with Eamon when he was a part of the resistence against her own father. Far too young for him, I always thought, but that’s usually the way with these kind of infatuations. Men grow out of them, women grow all the more determined in them.”

“She was a brave woman, and you’d do well to remember that when you’re in her chambers.”

“Yes, I didn’t…”

He stopped himself awkwardly, looking around the room. His eyes settled on a portrait of Arl Eamon on the wall with another woman she did not recognise, and he smiled to himself. “You are right. It was unworthy of me to speak of her like that.”

“You’ve made many unworthy comments as of late.”

“I think you’re right.”

His voice seemed quieter as he said that. Gingerly he stepped into the room further, taking a seat at the vanity that occupied a corner. The mirror was ostentatious, and caught different angles of his face as he sat. She noticed how frail he looked without his regalia, his shoulders slightly stooped, the edges of his face gone to jowl. He noticed her looking and smirked to himself, beginning to peel the apple with a small knife he fished from a pocket on his belt.

“We’re never who we want to be, when we look in the mirror, are we Wynne?” he said quietly, folding the peel of the apple and wrapping it in a hankerchief. “We have a version of ourselves we keep. A simpler version. Less grey hairs, less sharpness."

“I don’t waste time looking in the glass for answers,” she bit back.

  
“You should. If only to see what a handsome woman you still are. There are those who say that a good heart keeps you looking young. I wonder if there’s much to that.”

  
“A good heart means you care less about such things.”

  
“Hah! Perhaps that’s the right of it.”

He ate a small piece of the apple, shaved off the side, chewing it with thought before swallowing. “Anora used to spend many hours in that looking glass, you know. I don’t think for any reasons of vanity, though of course I think her the prettiest girl in Ferelden. She would spend hours, playing with bits of hair, with rouge and all kinds of things. This was in the early days of her marriage, mind. Earlier, but late enough in that Cailan had lost interest. I think she thought that she had done something wrong, that she wasn’t enough. I should have warned her off marrying somebody with Maric’s blood, but she wouldn’t have been swayed. And now here she is, doing it again.”

“Alistair will be devoted. He’s not the kind of man to stray.”

“It wouldn’t matter if he was. She’s stronger now. The scars have healed over again and again. There’ll be no breaking through now.”

  
“Alistair deserves better than that, too.”

  
“He’s got what he wanted.”

  
“You don’t know him. You could not be more wrong. He will be a fine king, but not because he desired to be one.”

  
“Isn’t that true of all rulers. Those that do best don’t do it because they want to, they do it because they need to.”

  
“Including Anora?”

  
“Including her. You might not have seen the best of her, but she loves this country. She loves it with every drop of her blood.”

  
“Like you loved it, you mean?”

He didn’t have a quick response to that. His face darkened for just a moment, then a wave of something else washed over him. He looked tired. Exhausted. He looked as if in that moment, there had been a mantle taken off of his shoulders, one that he had kept up with all of his strength, and all that was left was the pain of the bearing of it.

“I don’t expect you to understand what I have done, or to forgive it,” he said quietly, continuing to cut the apple carefully, not eating it but laying it out carefully on the wood. “I have my reasons, and I stand by them, for the most part. Some things I’d change. Probably not the things you’re thinking about. But I feel we’ve both been given a chance beyond our time. I hope I can prove to you that I deserve that time. That I can make something of the promise I had in the end.”

She thought of how tired she had felt these past few weeks. The spirit was still a welcome guest, but there was a pulling at the seams she could not quite make sense of, a feeling of being torn apart like a soft dough, stretched so thin she was a transparent window. Perhaps she could understand it, if she tried to; the feeling of being kept in this world for a promise, beyond what life should have handed them. To be facing these later years of their lives with the burden of duty on them. The bittersweet wondering of what life could have been if they had been granted a different path by the Maker, if they would have been grandparents, watching over generations of a family in a quiet village hold, if they would have been the kind of people who would have been happy with such a life had they been blessed with it.

Loghain smiled at her, a puzzled noise escaping his lips. “What’s on your mind?”

She allowed him a small smile despite herself. “Oh, nothing. The idle thoughts of an old woman.”

“You don’t need to play that part with me, you know.”

“Oh, I think perhaps I do. It is the only part I have left to play.”

“Then here’s to the idle thoughts of two old, opinionated souls.”

The spirit stirred in her once more, as she walked to him and took a slice of apple from his hand.


End file.
